"Rivers of Babylon" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Boney M. | ||||
from the album Nightflight to Venus | ||||
B-side | "Brown Girl in the Ring" | |||
Released |
|
|||
Format | ||||
Recorded | 1978 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 4:16 | |||
Label | ||||
Writer(s) |
|
|||
Producer(s) | Frank Farian | |||
Boney M. singles chronology | ||||
|
"Rivers of Babylon" (Remix) / "Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord" (Remix)" |
||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Boney M. | ||||
from the album Greatest Hits of All Times – Remix '88 |
||||
Released | October 1988 | |||
Format | ||||
Genre | ||||
Label | Hansa (FRG) | |||
Producer(s) | Frank Farian | |||
Boney M. singles chronology | ||||
|
"Rivers of Babylon" is a Rastafarian song written and recorded by Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton of the Jamaican reggae group The Melodians in 1970. The lyrics are adapted from the texts of Psalms 19 and 137 in the Hebrew Bible. The Melodians' original version of the song appeared in the soundtrack album of the 1972 movie The Harder They Come, making it internationally known.
The song was popularized in Europe by the 1978 Boney M. cover version, which was awarded a platinum disc and is one of the top ten all-time best-selling singles in the UK. The B-side of the single, "Brown Girl in the Ring", also became a hit.
The song is based on the Biblical Psalm 137:1-4, a hymn expressing the lamentations of the Jewish people in exile following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC: Previously the Kingdom of Israel, after being united under Kings David and Solomon, was split in two, with the Kingdom Of Israel in the north, conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC which caused the dispersion of 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. The southern Kingdom of Judah (hence the name Jews), home of the tribe of Judah and part of the Tribe of Levi, was free from foreign domination until the Babylonian conquest to which Rivers Of Babylon refers.
The namesake rivers of Babylon are the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The song also has words from :